Public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area have been roped into Islamic training by representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations during class time, prompting religious leaders to protest over Principal Robin Lowe's actions. Pastor Dave Welch, spokesman for the Houston Area Pastor Council, confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it "unacceptable." "The failure of the principal of Friendswood Junior High to respect simple procedures requiring parental notification for such a potentially controversial subject, to not only approve but participate personally in a religious indoctrination session led by representatives of a group with well-known links to terrorist organizations and her cavalier response when confronted, raises serious questions about her fitness to serve in that role," the pastors' organization said. According to a parent, whose name was withheld, the children were given the Islamic indoctrination during time that was supposed to be used for a physical education class.

John Turley-Ewart: Sharia by stealth — Ontario turns a blind eye to polygamyPosted: May 29, 2008, 4:07 PM by John Turley-Ewart

It’s an issue the Liberal government of Ontario, led by Premier Dalton McGuinty, doesn’t want to deal with — polygamy in the Muslim community. Last week the Toronto Star told the story of Safa Rigby, a 35-year-old mother of five children who recently learned her husband of 14 years had two other wives. Ms. Rigby’s life is in tatters. She followed her husband’s advice that she leave Toronto and live in Egypt for a year on the grounds that it would be better for their children to spend more time in a Muslim country. Now she knows it was a ruse. He used her time there to marry two other women.Ms. Rigby does not support polygamy, which has been illegal in Canada for more than a century. But Toronto Imam Aly Hindy, who runs the Toronto Salahuddin Islamic Centre, does. He married Ms. Rigby’s husband knowing he already had a wife and counselled him to keep the marriage secret from Ms. Rigby for as long as possible. Hindy has by his own admission performed 30 ceremonies in which men were married who already had wives. When Ms. Rigby confronted Hindy his response was reportedly cold and unsympathetic: “You will have to stand beside him in these difficult times,” Hindy told her. “You should stop causing problems to (sic) him. You will not get anything by divorce except destroying your life” he went on to say.

For Hindy this is not about Ms. Rigby or her husband’s desire to marry another woman — but making a broader political point. Hindy is using polygamy as a proxy for his fundamentalist version of Islam, something he wants to see legitimized in Canadian society as a whole. It is part of an attempt at empire building, a bid that if successful will enhance his influence within the Muslim and demonstrate that Ontario and Canada is too ignorant and too afraid of Islam to uphold its own laws. He has admitted as much, challenging Ontario’s government to dare stop him. “If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that,” he told the Star. Interviewed after the Star story appeared on the John Oakley Show on AM 640Toronto, Hindy was not apologetic and argued that freedom of religion in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms trumped prohibitions against polygamous marriages. When he and another Imam from Toronto, Steve Rockwell, were challenged on the appropriateness of polygamy by a Muslim caller to the Oakley Show, the caller was immediately attacked and his identity as a true Muslim questioned because he did not follow Hindy’s view that polygamy is a foundational pillar of Islam that grows out of Sharia Law. This speaks to a troubling absolutist interpretation of Islamic law, which runs against the reality that Sharia law is much more flexible that Hindy allows for, a fact well documented by Anver Emon, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of Toronto. Moreover, as noted in the Star article on Ms. Rigby, there is grave doubt that the Charter protects Islamic polygamy, as Hindy believes. Nik Bala, who teaches family law at Queen’s University, points out that “Islam permits polygamy, but doesn’t require it to be a practising Muslim.” This is key, and may mean Hindy’s attempt to find shelter behind the Charter will fail. Moreover, the impact polygamy has on women's equality and children could also sway the courts to uphold Canada's ban on polygamy.

But there is little chance at the moment that this will become a Charter issue down the road. Dalton McGuinty’s government has responded to the revelations about polygamy in the Muslim community by denying its existence. On Wednesday Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin responded to a question on the issue in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario saying: “Polygamy is a serious crime in Ontario . It’s not something that’s tolerated. As you know, the best advice I can give the honourable member opposite is that if she has any evidence that someone is engaging in multiple marriages, she should report it, because our Registrar General and our official reporting mechanisms have no evidence that that’s happening. As you know, Mr. Speaker, marriage is a contract. A contract require a licence, and once a marriage occurs, it has to be registered. There are no multiple marriages being registered in the province of Ontario.”Mr. McMeekin’s response is a shameful twisting of the law. The criminal code is clear. Section 293. (1) reads: “Every one who(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into(i) any form of polygamy, or(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”There is no provision in the law, contrary to Mr. McMeekin’s assertion in the Ontario Legislature, that a polygamous marriage has to be registered before the government can act. The opposite is in fact true.By turning a blind eye to polygamy, Premier McGuinty is giving licence to Sharia by stealth.In 2005 Ontario’s premier rightly ruled out Sharia family courts, conceding that Muslim women may well fair poorly if such a system was allowed to be established. The same concern exists today, yet Ontario’s Liberals sit on their hands. Muslim women like Ms. Rigby are being victimized as are her children. Imam Hindy has told her to put up with her husband’s desire for other wives. She has properly said no and has now obtained a divorce. When will Premier McGuinty’s government say no and enforce the law it is bound to uphold?

Bruce Blumberg, who is the chair of the Academic Senate Council on Student Experience at the University of California-Irvine, wasn’t happy about a recent PJM article I co-wrote with Jonathan Movroydis. In the piece, we make the claim that UCI administrators have capitulated to the university’s radical Muslim Student Union (MSU), whose members regularly voice support for terrorist groups and denounce America and Israel.

In an email posted by Jerry Pournelle, Blumberg writes that “no one” in the “media or on campus” is aware of the inaction on the part of the administration and the UCI Police Department that is alleged in the article. It appears that Blumberg, like most of the UCI faculty and administration, will never come the defense of students who can think for themselves, will stand up for their civil liberties, and won’t flock with the rest of the sheep.During the academic year at UCI, the MSU holds several hateful events, including an annual anti-Israel week. Although MSU events certainly fall within the bounds of “free speech,” freedom of speech and expression does not include the right of MSU members to engage in blatant harassment. Nor should it enable UCI administrators to restrict the freedoms of other individuals at the university campus.

For example, student journalist Jonathan Movroydis and his brother were harassed out of an auditorium for simply recording a lecture by the radical imam Amir Abdel Malik-Ali in 2007. University officials allowed for members of the MSU to police their own event and allowed the group to prohibit filming at a public university event. Fortunately, California Assemblyman Chuck Devore was able to convince UCI Chancellor Michael Drake to reverse the campus taping policy. The administration, however, has been unwilling to fully enforce this new rule.

Moreover, UC Irvine police officers will stand idly while intimidation occurs, and administrators continue efforts to censor certain groups and people on the campus. I learned this firsthand last year, when I had a camera shoved in my face by a member of the MSU. At the scene a police officer refused to take a statement from me. Because I was appalled and could not believe that shoving a camera in someone’s face would be considered lawful behavior, I could not let such a matter fall. After several phone calls and e-mails, I was finally able to schedule a meeting with Edgar Dormitorio, Dean of Judicial Affairs at UCI, and given the opportunity to file a complaint with the police department on campus. I had the perpetrator’s face on camera and witnesses. However, no action has yet been taken against the student.

While I studied at UCI, I witnessed an affirmative action bake sale being shut down by administrators. Because a group of students wanted to sell cupcakes at different suggested prices for various racial groups in order to demonstrate what they felt were the injustices of affirmative action, the administration decided to completely shut down the event for what appeared to be “sensitivity” issues. Regardless of one’s position on affirmative action, it is outrageous that one’s view on a college campus, which so often promotes itself as the marketplace of different ideas, would be restricted by the administration.

Interestingly enough, when the Muslim Student Union brings speakers who have called for genocidal actions against Jews and Israelis, the administration refuses to speak out against this blatant hate speech.

MSU’s right to free speech does not require the administration to be silent when the group’s members call for the destruction of Israel and threaten students who are Israel supporters . At the very least, administrators should uphold the rights of all students and make certain that individuals have the right to film and protest. The university should refrain from selective enforcement of its rules and regulations.

Thus far the administration at UCI has been extremely negligent. An independent task force investigation recently issued findings that clearly suggest anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and pro-terror speech is well documented at UC Irvine. The full report can be read here.

According to this independent investigation, harassment and intimidation has occurred on campus and the administration has not worked to alleviate the problems that plague the campus. Instead, the administration’s lack of response and selective enforcement of policy has aided groups like the MSU in vilifying other students and groups.

For instance, when an anti-hate rally took place after a cardboard “apartheid wall” put up on campus by the MSU was vandalized in 2004, Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez refused to invite Jewish organizations. In a more recent incident, a non-Jewish student described the atmosphere at UCI as dominated by a philosophy that looks at the United States and Israel as enemies, while supporting terror organizations. The same student had a professor who had a picture of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on her computer. She also recounts an argument with an Iranian student who said “f- Israel” and pulled down his trousers to show his swastika tattoo.

In his email, Blumberg implies that the situation at UCI is a “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine” issue with mistreatment on both sides. With all due respect to Dr. Blumberg, he has got to venture outside his office a bit more. If the Academic Senate Council really supports the freedoms of all students and believes that UCI is truly a beacon of “free speech,” they are doing a poor job of showing it. They could learn a thing or two from Democratic Representative Brad Sherman, who recently urged Chancellor Drake to “publicly denounce” the MSU’s hate speech.

As a recent alumnus of the university, I will continue to advise my friends and family members not to attend UC Irvine unless changes are made.

Court hears accused terrorists' ideologyMen talk of imperative to retaliate, in wiretaps played at the trial of a 20-year-old man

Melissa LeongCanwest News Service

Friday, June 06, 2008

BRAMPTON, Ont. -- For the first time since the arrests of 18 terrorism suspects in 2006, a court heard on Thursday the men describe the ideology behind their alleged scheme to attack Canada.

In wiretaps played at the trial of a 20-year-old man, his co-accused spoke at length about their "global fight" to "get rid of the oppressors." They discussed the benefits of martyrdom and the need to retaliate against foreign soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, even if on Western soil. "You harm one Muslim, the whole Muslim [nation] has to defend that person," the accused leader of the group said.

None of the suspects can be identified because of a publication ban.

In another recorded conversation, the alleged leader explained, "If they're your enemy, they're your enemy everywhere you see them." He continued: "So, if the Jews are your enemy in Israel, it doesn't mean Jews are not your enemy here. Every single Jew is your enemy."

If that rule applies, someone might think you could just kill any Jewish man walking down the street, another group member said. "If the guy walking down the street says, pro Zion, pro Zion . . . wears a big Jewish thing saying, yeah, pro Israeli state . . . okay, now you're a target. "If you are to do . . . to that guy you wouldn't be held accountable like, by 'Allah' or anything . . . and you would be rewarded for it because he is an enemy."

The alleged leader said in one wiretap that he was planning something on a "greater scale" than the 2005 London bombings.

The court heard that he had spent "every last penny" -- or about $4,000 -- on a shipment of 13 firearms from Mexico.

The total cost of $10,000 was due at the end of March or the supplier would have to sell them on the street, he said in a wire-tap. To raise money, he met a man who was running an elaborate bank scam. The fraudster, identified as Talib, was using "white," "blond," women, possibly "crack heads," to take out bank loans with fraudulent information. They would cash the cheques at a payday lending store.

Huntington Beach, CA –February 12, 2008 –The Orange County Independent Task Force released its Findings and Recommendations (Report), concerning alleged incidents of anti-Semitism at The University of California, Irvine (UCI). The investigation began in February 2007 and lasted approximately one year. Over the course of the investigation Task Force members interviewed, students, faculty and community members and visited the campus on many occasions. Over 80 hours of interviews and numerous documents, articles, and written complaints were used in the compilation of the Report.Among its findings, The Task Force investigation has concluded the following:• The existence of: physical and verbal harassment, hate speech directed at Jews by guest speakers, hate events sponsored by the Muslim Student Union (MSU), disruptive behavior on the part of Muslim students when pro-Israeli speakers appear on campus, anti-Israeli classroom environments, and an unresponsive, if not a hostile, administration.• Hate speakers have targeted “Zionist Jews” at MSU events; that MSU has defiled Jewish symbols, often using depiction of anti-Semitic stereotypes; and that Jewish students were targets of intimidation.• There has been a lack of response by the administration that has selectively enforced University rules and regulations.• The Chancellor has refused to unequivocally condemn anti-Semitic speech although other college/university presidents have spoke clearly and decisively against this form of hate speech.• For the most part, Jewish organizations in Orange County have been ineffective in dealing with anti-Semitism at UCI.Some of the major recommendations include: UCI should be held accountable for its actions and inaction by community leaders, Jewish organizations, and donors. Students with a strong Jewish identity should consider not attending UCI until tangible changes are made. The Board of Regents should investigate the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs in his capacity as an impartial arbiter of University Rules and Regulations.The Task Force had initially decided to release its Report and Recommendations in December 2007. The release was delayed in order to study the report(s) issued by the United States Department of Education Office, Office for Civil Rights (OCR)On November 30, 2007, (OCR) issued two reports contained in separate letters written to Dr. Michael V. Drake, Chancellor of UCI, and to Ms. Susan B. Tuchman of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). ZOA initiated the complaint in 2004 on behalf of students at UCI. These two letter/findings are not identical and do not contain exactly the same listed allegations. The reason why OCR issued two separate letter/findings is unclear. For example, the letter to Ms. Tuchman deals with a total of 26 allegations while the letter to Chancellor Drake deals with only 13 allegations.In addition:• Certain allegations were dismissed because they were not “related to the national origin of any of the Jewish students who complained”.• Several other allegations were dismissed as “untimely filed”.• The University was excused from any wrongdoing based on minimal action it did after these events occurred.• Key administration figures were not interviewed by OCR investigators until late September 2006, nearly two years after the initial complaint was filed by ZOA on October 11, 2004.The OCR investigation does not deny that these “allegations” of anti-Semitism occurred. In fact, OCR’s investigation and report(s) substantiates this Task Force’s findings that significant anti-Semitic activities have existed UCI for some period of time and that, while the University administration may not have done anything illegal in this regard, the University has done little if anything, except for token actions after each incident, to help prevent, discourage, curtail or punish the perpetrators of these anti-Semitic activities on campus.

In the blog post, Ms. Mellon quotes a letter by Trish Hanks, Friendswood IndependentSchool District Superintendent. From the letter:

"In response to an incident that occurred between students at Friendswood JuniorHigh School and the perception and fear that it caused to some involved, Robin Lowe,principal, was contacted by the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) andtold that they considered the incident a hate crime and had reported it to the FBI.Mrs. Lowe and Sherry Green, Deputy Superintendent, attended a meeting withrepresentatives of CAIR."

An unexplained "hate crime" has, according to CAIR, been committed and CAIR hasreported the crime to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

End of story?

No. Apparently, a report to the FBI isn't good enough. From the letter:

"At the meeting, CAIR requested an opportunity to present factual and basicinformation about Muslims to students at Friendswood Junior High School since theschool is predominantly Anglo Christian."

Did CAIR intimidate the principal and deputy superintendent? CAIR representativesreport a "hate crime" and request time to do a presentation on Islam; no connection?

Further confusing the issue, the Galveston Daily News reports that Asmara Siddiqidenies that CAIR contacted the FBI because "...the school decided to resolve theissue".

1) Is CAIR now threatening school administrators to gain secret access to Americanschool children? 2) Why was CAIR, with a proven track record of supporting Islamic terrorism,invited to the school in the first place?

The Friendswood School invited representatives of an Islamic-terrorist supportingorganization to make a presentation to the most vulnerable of our citizens: ourchildren. What could these children possibly learn from a hateful organization likeCAIR, one that is on record praising Islamic terrorist groups that have and continueto target and terror-murder innocent school children?

No representative of CAIR should be allowed access to any student, in any school, atany time, for any reason. The insanity of allowing CAIR representatives intoschools must end, now. No administrator, at any level, should have the authority togrant CAIR access to children under any circumstances.

If you come across information regarding CAIR in the public/private schools, pleaselet us know. Include as much information as you have; name of school, presentationoffered, when offered, who was/will be in attendance, dates/times, etc. Our goal isto report any interaction between CAIR and school students/staff and hopefully worktoward the day when all schools will, as a matter of course, refuse CAIR access tostudents or staff.

CAIR has no legitimate reason to meet with school students or staff; help us makethis a reality.

A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history.

"Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths."

Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."

"But that is, literally, the translation of jihad," said Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and acclaimed author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Aslan explained that the definition does not preclude a militant interpretation.

EXAMINER.COM RELATED ARTICLESD.C., Montgomery public workers most likely to earn more than $100K Immigrant advocacy agency reports threatening calls State joins lawsuit accusing EPA of loose ozone pollution standards Numbers from the Democratic presidential nominating contests Toll Brothers swings to hefty 2Q loss on write-downs "How you interpret [jihad] is based on whatever your particular ideology, or world viewpoint, or even prejudice is," Aslan said. "But how you define jihad is set in stone."

A statement from Montgomery County Public Schools said that all text used by teachers had been properly vetted and were appropriate for classroom uses.

Aslan said groups like Sewall's are often more concerned about advancing their own interpretation of Islam than they are about defining its parts and then allowing interpretation to happen at the classroom level.

Sewall's report blames publishing companies for allowing the influence of groups like the California-based Council on Islamic Education to serve throughout the editorial process as "screeners" for textbooks, softening or deleting potentially unflattering topics within the faith.

"Fundamentally I'm worried about dumbing down textbooks," he said, "by groups that come to state education officials saying we want this and that - and publishers need to find a happy medium."

Maryland state delegate Saqib Ali refrained from joining the fray. "The job of assigning curriculum is best left to educators and the school board, and I trust their judgment," he said.

Group Criticizes Texts at Saudi AcademyA study has found that some textbooks at a private Islamic school in Northern Virginia teach that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam.

The Islamic Saudi Academy receives much of its funding from the Saudi government and teaches about 900 students from kindergarten to 12th grade at two Fairfax County campuses.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said yesterday it obtained 17 academy textbooks and found several disturbing passages.A 12th-grade text says that apostates -- those who leave Islam -- and adulterers may be permissibly killed. A social studies text states that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people."

The academy has said it promotes tolerance and revises Saudi textbooks as needed. A telephone call yesterday afternoon to the school's main office was not immediately returned.

What do you expect? The idea that adulterers and apostates should be killed isn't "extremist" or "hijacked" Islam. It's mainstream Islamic teaching, taught in the Sunnah and all the schools of Islamic law. I know that pointing that out will earn me more charges of "Islamophobia," but reality is reality, fellows. This is just Islamorealism.

Oh, and by the way, the 1999 valedictorian of the Islamic Saudi Academy was Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who is now doing 30 years in the pen for joining an Al-Qaeda plot to kill Bush. Surprised?

"Review: Troubling passages in texts at Va. school," by Matthew Barakat for AP, June 11 (thanks to all who sent this in):

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday.Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."

Here is a hadith from Bukhari (the hadith collection Muslims consider most reliable) in which the Jews conspire to murder Muhammad. There are plenty more where that one came from. Here is a hadith from Bukhari in which Muhammad says that the lives and property of unbelievers are safe from him as long as they convert to Islam -- implying that if they don't, their lives and property are fair game.

The passages were found in selected textbooks used during the 2007-08 school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches 900 students in grades K-12 at two campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax and receives much of its funding from the Saudi government.The academy has come under scrutiny from critics who allege that it fosters an intolerant brand of Islam similar to that taught in the conservative Saudi kingdom. In the review, the panel recommended that the school make all of its textbooks available to the State Department so changes can be made before the next school year.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel formed by Congress, last year recommended that the school be closed amid concerns that it promotes violence and too closely mimics the conservative Saudi educational system.

The commission made its recommendation last year to close the school even though it had not reviewed the textbooks. Now that some have been reviewed, "we feel more confident that the potential problems we flagged before really are there," said the commission's spokeswoman, Judith Ingram.

School officials have long denied that the academy fosters intolerance. It has acknowledged that some of the Saudi textbooks contain harsh language, but says that the texts have improved in recent years and are revised as needed by the academy before being distributed to students....

The commission said it obtained 17 of the academy's textbooks through a variety of channels, including from members of Congress. The texts did appear to contain numerous revisions, including pages that were removed or passages that were whited out, but numerous troubling passages remained, according to the panel:

_ The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed.

_ The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write that "(m)ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible," meaning that a Muslim can take with impunity the life and property of someone believed guilty of polytheism. According to the panel, the strict Saudi interpretation of polytheism includes Shiite and Sufi Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.See above.

_ A social studies text offers the view that Jews were responsible for the split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims: "The cause of the discord: The Jews conspired against Islam and its people. A sly, wicked person who sinfully and deceitfully professed Islam infiltrated (the Muslims)."Typical paranoid Jew-hatred.

More generally, the panel found that the academy textbooks hold the view that the Muslim world was strong when united under a single caliph, the Arabic language and the Sunni creed, and that Muslims have grown weak because of foreign influence and internal divisions.The commission's findings issued come a month after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to extend the academy's lease for its main campus, which sits on county property.

The county conducted its own study of the textbooks last year at the request of Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district encompasses the academy.

Hyland and the county never released results of what they had found, but Hyland said in approving the lease that he is comfortable with the school's teachings, though he did so with a qualification.

"I would be less than frank if I didn't tell you that the curriculum does contain references to the Quran, which, if taken out of context and read literally, would cause come concern," Hyland said at the meeting at which the lease was extended.

Ah yes, those Qur'an quotes are only incendiary when "taken out of context and read literally." Of course. When one puts them in context and reads them figuratively, they're all peace and love. One would think Hyland would hesitate to claim that an Islamic school, staffed by people who know the Qur'an far better than he does, was misreading the Qur'an, but he feels compelled to jump into the PC lockstep, no matter how absurd it makes him look.

When will authorities face the implications of the fact that such teachings are essentially mainstream Islam? I'm inclined to think never.

At what point does a publicly funded charter school with strong Islamic ties cross the line and inappropriately promote religion?

That's a question now facing us in Minnesota. For the past five years, the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., has operated in close connection with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. The school accepts public funds, and thus the broader constitutional requirements placed on all public schools. Nonetheless, in many ways it behaves like a religious school.

AP A teacher talks to her students at Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, Oct. 12, 2004. The school is named for the Muslim general who conquered Spain in the eighth century. It shares a building with a mosque and the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. The cafeteria serves Halal food. Arabic is a required subject. There is a break for midday prayers.

On Fridays, many students join with Muslim teachers and attend religious services in the school's gym. There are voluntary Islamic Studies classes held "after" school, but before the buses leave to take the school's 400 students home. Most of the students are the children of low-income Muslim immigrants.

In March, substitute teacher Amanda Getz happened to be at the school on a Friday. She has said publicly that she was instructed to take her fifth-grade students to the bathroom for "ritual washing" and then to the gym for a prayer service. In the classroom where she assisted, an Islamic Studies assignment was written on the blackboard. Students were told to copy it into their planners. "That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other," she said afterward.

Since starting the school five years ago, Asad Zaman and co-founder Hesham Hussein – both imams – have held top positions with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and also with the school. The Muslim American Society, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, is the American branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood, "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

Mr. Zaman is the school's principal, and Mr. Hussein was chairman of its governing board until he was killed in a car crash in Saudi Arabia in January. In 2004, Mr. Zaman told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that when students have family problems, he can call on a "network" of imams for help. "Children feel comfortable here asking questions about their own religion," a teacher told a reporter at the time.

If the school is promoting Islam, it would be in keeping with the mission of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. Last year, the society featured Shaykh Khalid Yasin at its annual convention. Mr. Yasin is well-known for preaching that husbands can beat disobedient wives, among other inflammatory messages. When he spoke at the society's convention, his topic was "Building a Successful Muslim Community in Minnesota." And until I wrote about the issue in my column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in March and April, the society also had "beneficial and enlightening information" about Islam on its Web site, including "Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr."

I've written just two columns critical of the school for the Star Tribune. But that was enough for State Rep. Mindy Greiling, the chairman of the Minnesota House of Representatives' K-12 Finance Committee, to publicly call for me to be fired from the newspaper.

After my columns appeared, the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union began an investigation, which is still underway. The Minnesota Department of Education also investigated. Its report, released last month, concluded that the school is breaking the law by holding Friday religious services on school grounds; that it should stop Muslim teachers' practice of praying with students at that service; and that it must provide bus transportation home before Islamic Studies classes let out.

But the report was flawed in important respects. Most significantly, it was silent about the school's close entanglement with the religious organization with which it is affiliated.

It's a safe bet that if the school in question here were essentially a Catholic school, this wouldn't be a debate. Imagine a public charter located in the headquarters building of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Its principal is a priest and its board chairman is the archbishop. Catholic students there "are comfortable asking questions about their own religion." Latin is required, and the cafeteria serves fish during Lent. Students break for prayer and attend Mass during the school day, and buses leave only when after-school Catholic Catechism classes are over. Such a school would never open.

But with Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy we have something different. It's held up as a model, "religiously sensitive" public school. It is justified in terms of culture and "religious accommodation."

Minnesota education officials need both the backbone and the oversight tools necessary to prevent the blurring of lines between Islam and the public schools. If they continue their tepid response, a separate system of taxpayer-financed education for Muslims may take root here. Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy could be the first of many.

How I nearly lost my business after refusing to hire a Muslim hair stylist who wouldn't show her hair

By Natasha Courtenay-SmithLast updated at 10:10 PM on 17th June 2008

It seems too lunatic to be true. But here a hair salon boss reveals how she was driven to the brink of ruin - and forced to pay £4,000 for 'hurt feelings' - after refusing to hire a Muslim stylist who wouldn't show her hair at work

For Sarah Desrosiers, meeting Bushra Noah was not a moment in her life that she would describe as especially memorable. Not only was it brief - lasting little more than ten minutes - but it was rapidly obvious to Sarah that Bushra was not the person for the junior stylist position she was trying to fill at her hairdressing salon.

Sarah's reasoning? Quite simply that Bushra, a Muslim who wears a headscarf for religions reasons, had made it clear she would not be removing the garment even while at work.

Sarah Desrosiers says she did nothing wrong by not employing Bushra Noah and would have done the same if an employee refused to remove a baseball cap. Sarah felt that a job requirement of any hairdresser was that the stylist's hair would provide clients with a showcase of different looks. Especially one working in a salon such as hers, which specialises in alternative cuts and colours. Yet the ten minutes during which Sarah's world collided with Bushra's has resulted in an extraordinary employment battle, in which she was accused of 'direct' and 'indirect' discrimination. For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in London's King's Cross.

In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra's claim of direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had succeeded. Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of 'injury to feelings'. Although this is a smaller sum than she'd feared she might have to hand over, Sarah, 32, is still outraged.

'I am a small business and the bottom line is that this is not a woman who worked for me,' says Sarah.

EBushra Noah says that Sarah Desrosiers 'hurt her feelings' by not employing her after a ten minute interview

'She is simply someone I met for a job interview, who, for a host of reasons, was not right for the job. I cannot see how she deserves £4,000. As for the notion that I've injured her feelings - well, people's feelings get injured every day. I dread to think the sorts of things that people will try to claim injured feelings for now that this precedent has been set.'

In its ruling, the tribunal said it was 'satisfied that Bushra was not treated less favourably than Sarah would have treated any woman who, whether Muslim or not, wears a hair covering at all times when at work'.

Accordingly, the claim of direct discrimination failed.

But with regard to the issue of indirect discrimination, they found that Sarah had pursued a 'legitimate aim - that aim being to promote the image of the business'. However, the burden of proof was on Sarah to prove that her means of achieving that legitimate aim was proportionate. She was not able to prove her contention that employing someone with a headscarf would have the negative impact on her business's stylistic integrity that she feared.

Since the judgment, Bushra, who is of Syrian descent and has worn a headscarf since she was 13, has, so far at least, chosen not to comment. But, speaking last year, she admitted she had attended 25 interviews for hairdressing jobs without success. But Sarah, she told the tribunal, had upset her the most.

She said: 'I felt so down and got so depressed. I thought: "If I am not going to defend myself, who is?" Hairdressing has been what I've wanted to do ever since I was at high school.

'This has ruined my ambitions. Wearing a headscarf is essential to my beliefs.' Bushra had a job in a salon in London, where her tasks included cutting hair, highlighting, tinting and perming, before she left to get married in Syria in 2006.

But on her return to Britain, she was unable to find work. She has given up her ambitions to become a hairdresser and is studying travel and tourism at Hammersmith and West London College while working part-time in a shop. At the tribunal, Bushra was asked if Sarah had made derogatory remarks about her headscarf.

She replied: 'She did not. She just asked me if I wore it all the time, or whether I'd take it off.'

Although Bushra is believed to have been acting alone, in the past similar cases have been championed by Muslim traditionalist groups. In 2006, the Law Lords overturned a court ruling that teenager Shabina Begum's human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing full Islamic dress at school.

Enlarge Sarah in her salon - Wedge - located in north London says that the discrimination case against her almost ruined her business The extremist Muslim group Hizb ut-Tahrir later admitted that it had 'advised her'.

Meanwhile, Sarah Desrosiers is wondering how to raise the £4,000 she has been ordered to pay Bushra. She has spent her savings on her legal battle and simply has no money left.

'I am a one-woman band, and am already in debt due to the set-up costs of opening my own salon,' says Sarah. 'I dread to think how many haircuts I'm going to have to do to earn the £4,000 I have to pay Bushra. This has, without doubt, been the worst year of my life.'

Such a messy set of circumstances, let alone the strain of having the case bought against her, was certainly not what Sarah expected when she started out on her career aged 17. From the outset, she had grand ambitions, telling her mother that she would one day have her own salon.

'Even back then, I realised how important your own hair is to the job,' says Sarah. 'I went into hairdressing a rather plain brunette, but within a few weeks I had a bright red crop. I wanted to provide clients with inspiration through my own hair. Whether they're in a conventional High Street salon, or something slightly different like my salon, customers expect to see the stylists with hair that is on trend, striking and can give them ideas for their own look.'

In 1997, Sarah got a job at a salon on London's Portobello Road, where she remained for almost a decade. In March 2006, feeling ready to spread her wings, she wrote a business plan, secured a loan and invested £5,000 of her savings into the lease on a small salon on Caledonian Road. She named it Wedge, and planned to specialise in 'urban and edgy' cuts, rather like the cerise colour she often dyes her own hair.

'I'd never felt as proud as I did on the day I picked up the keys to my salon,' says Sarah. 'I was prepared to put my heart and soul into my business in order to make ends meet, and for the first few months, I worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, all by myself. I barely saw daylight, but I didn't mind because I was fulfilling my ambition. Of course, there were a few nerve-racking moments, such as when another salon opened a few doors away. But that is part of owning your own business, and I felt proud of all I was achieving.'

By March 2007, the business was doing so well that Sarah needed to take on another stylist. To minimise her overheads, she decided the best way to do this would be by renting out a chair in her salon to an experienced stylist - who would take a share of her profits - and employ a junior to work for both of them.

Sarah received dozens of applications for the junior position, one of which was from Bushra Noah.

'Her CV didn't stand out because I was looking for someone who lived locally - something I'd specified in the advert so that I could call them in as and when required - and she lived several miles away in Acton,' says Sarah.========='One day she rang up to see if I'd got her CV and begged me for an interview. I told her I had concerns about where she lived, but she sounded so desperate that I agreed she could come in for a chat.'

A few days later, Bushra duly arrived at the salon.

'I have to say I didn't take to her,' says Sarah. 'She waltzed into the salon and hung up her coat as though she already had the job.

'Naturally, I noticed her headscarf. But I presumed that, as she's a hairdresser, she'd take if off when she was working. In 16 years, I've never known any stylist cover their hair with a headscarf. And this particular headscarf came all the way down to her eyebrows and covered her entire hairline.'

Sarah broached the subject with Bushra, who said she would not be removing the garment. After ten minutes, with the interview complete, Sarah said she would come back to Bushra about the vacancy.

'As she left, Bushra turned to me and said that she'd been turned down for jobs before,' says Sarah. 'And I admit I thought: "Well, what do you expect? It was not a religious matter. If she'd come in wearing a baseball cap and saying she wouldn't take it off for work, then she wouldn't have got the job either.'

One morning in the second week of June 2007, an innocuous white envelope landed on Sarah's doormat. It contained a letter saying that she was being sued for £15,000 for indirect and direct discrimination by Bushra Noah. This, the letter stated, related to compensation for injury to her feelings and lost earnings. Later, that figure was increased to £34,000.

'I read it and re-read it and stood there dumbfounded,' says Sarah. 'I remembered Bushra, and I guessed straight away that the claim related to the headscarf. In my mind I was saying "But I wasn't discriminating, it's just a part of the job", over and over again. I dialled the number at the top of the letter and was told I needed to get a solicitor, but that because I worked, I wasn't entitled to Legal Aid. I thought: "This is it - my business is over." I was devastated.'

Using her savings of £2,000, Sarah employed a lawyer who helped her draft a statement about her meeting with Bushra. But with his fees at £280 an hour, she knew she couldn't afford to fight a satisfactory legal battle. Her parents - her mother is a nurse, and her father is retired - weren't in a position to help her out financially either.

'I was at my wits' end, and I had no idea how I was going to pay for my legal fees,' says Sarah. 'I was virtually being accused of racism, which is ridiculous. I've cut the hair of people from all walks of life, including transsexuals, and you can hardly run an alternative salon if you are prejudiced.'

Help came when a friend tipped off a reporter about what was happening, and Sarah's case gained publicity, first locally, then nationally. Since then, she has received support from hundreds of people in the hairdressing industry, including black celebrity stylist Errol Douglas. Still, the wave of support did little to ease the stress as she fought to clear her name.

'For months, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I felt as though my whole life was on hold. All I could see was that I'd be forced into bankruptcy and lose my business.'

In the course of preparing for her trial, Sarah estimates she has lost £40,000 of her salon's annual income. She also faced a further blow when it emerged that Bushra had increased the figure to £34,000 to compensate for hate mail she had received following Press coverage of the trial. In March, Sarah faced a three- day employment tribunal, and endured four hours of cross-examination.

'I managed to defend myself and not cry, but it was incredibly difficult,' she says. 'I'd even had to ask my accountant, who is a Muslim, and another Muslim friend to write letters confirming that I am not racist. The whole experience was so humiliating and, most importantly, unnecessary. I kept thinking: "I've worked hard all my life - how can it be possible that someone can come into my shop, talk to me for ten minutes and then sue me for £34,000? How is that possibly fair?".'

As she reels from the verdict, Sarah is contemplating her next move. While part of her is tempted to pay, simply to close the door on this unpleasant episode, she also feels she should fight to clear her name. Her lawyers are advising her on whether or not she can appeal.

'Because of this there will be a black mark against my name for the rest of my life,' she says. 'I feel I have not done anything wrong, and this is a terrible price to pay for a meeting that lasted ten minutes.'

Corey Saylor, national legislative director for the terrorist front organization, CAIR, recently wrote an op-ed in hopes of fooling the public that an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act offered by Rep. Pete Hoekstra:

Could it be that Saylor's leash-holders in Hamas find the terms used in the amendment just a bit too close to describing the Islamist ideology? Or is it more likely that CAIR members and officers have been known to share the ideals and goals of the "Islamofascists" of Hamas.and since the imposition of an Islamic "caliphate" is odious to North Americans.Saylor wants to obscure this from the public?

However, Saylor is obviously not conversant with his own organizations history.

"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam -- that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam"

Is Saylor repudiating the actions of those "fighting for freedom.(those who) kill themselves for Islam"? And what would Ahmad have to say about Saylor implying that these so-called "freedom fighters" are "thugs" and "criminals"?

Did not Ahmad praise Saylor's "thugs" and "criminals" as "heroes"? Who is right? Saylor describing those who terror-murder in the name of Islam as "thugs" and "criminals" is insulting to all self-respecting thugs and criminals who don't use religion to justify their crimes.

Shades of the Danish Cartoons: Random House in disgraceAugust 6, 2008 - by Roger L Simon

Although it has for some time been a division of German media giant Bertelsmann, Random House has been one of the distinguished names in American publishing since the halcyon days of Bennett Cerf. So it is particularly repugnant to see the company knuckling under to essentially the same reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-free speech forces that repressed the Danish cartoons. As we learned in the [1] Wall Street Journal today, the company has decided not to publish Sherry Jones’ historical novel “The Jewel of Medina” about Mohammed’s child bride Aisha. The book was part of a $100,000 two-book contract with the [2] author.

Shame on Random House! This act of abject cowardice and de facto censorship is one of the most disgraceful incidents I can think of in the history of American publishing. As Asra Q. Nomani writes in the WSJ: Random House feared the book would become a new “Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book’s Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones’s novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it “disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now.” He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”

The “credible” source was one Denise Spellberg, a University of Texas academic who, on receipt of Jones’ galleys, started tattling like a six-year old to Muslims Spellberg felt would be angry with the work. Perry and his cronies simply caved in. That the publishers reference the “Satanic Verses” in their defence is yet more despicable. In the early 1990s, when I was president of West Coast Branch of PEN, we did everything in our power to defend Rushdie against the attempts to suppress his freedom of speech. Random House does nothing for its own authors. The natural conclusion of their behavior in this instance is that nothing critical of Islam could ever be written.

PEN and the Authors’ Guild should launch an investigation into this situation and if the allegations are true, should urge a boycott of Random House until it changes its policy. If I were Jones, I would sue the publishing house for all they’re worth.

[Full disclosure: I had three novels published by a division of Random House in the 1980s - Villard Books. At that point, I was very satisfied with the publisher and could not imagine them rejecting a manuscript for the reasons they are now. It’s a different world.]

UPDATE: Some commenters have pointed out that Random House’s behavior is not strictly speaking censorship because the company is not an organ of the state. They are correct. But I submit that that a publishing house the size of Random House has a certain level of public trust. And I would imagine they would agree. One of the key measures of public trust in the United States is the protection of free speech. Yes, as one commenter stated, this is cowardice but not censorship, but it is a form of cowardice with immense social ramifications about which we should all be concerned.

This is part of the America's Future series airing on FOX News Channel, looking at the challenges facing the country in the 21st century.BRANTFORD, Ontario — Once home to inventor Alexander Graham Bell and hockey great Wayne Gretzky, the small Canadian city of Brantford is now home to a terrorist — and the Canadian government might not do anything about it.Forty years ago, Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad, a former teacher, joined the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.On Dec. 26, 1968, Mohammad and another gunman launched an attack on an El Al airliner at Athens International Airport. The two ran up on the tarmac firing guns and, throwing grenades at the passenger jet, wounded a flight attendant as she opened an emergency exit and killed a 50-year-old passenger, Leon Shirdan.The gunmen were captured, tried and convicted in Greek court, and they were sentenced in 1970 to serve 17 years in prison. But they were released just months later after the PFLP hijacked an Olympic Airways flight and demanded their release as part of a hostage exchange.In 1987, when a much grayer Mohammad arrived at Canada's doorstep, his entry visa made no mention of his terrorist act. Canadian authorities later determined Mohammad was a convicted terrorist, and they ordered him out of the country.Yet Mohammad, having repeatedly appealed government orders for his expulsion, has extended his stay for 20 years. He still resides in the same house in Brantford."You have many sources to know what you want to know, but don't ask me anything," Mohammad, now 65, said when confronted by FOX News.The Canadian government has also played a large part in Mohammad's stay; Canada will not send its deportees — even convicted terrorists and murderers — just anywhere ."The rule is you can't send someone back to [face] torture," said Lorne Waldman, Mohammad's former attorney.Mohammad's family left for Lebanon after the state of Israel was formed, and despite a government recommendation that he be sent to Lebanon, the Canadian government believes he may be tortured or ill-treated if returned there. Canada will not send him to Israel, and no other country has stepped forward to take him.These days, Mohammad lives in his Brantford home, tending the fruit trees in his back yard. Despite the terrorist attack he launched in 1968, he is not deemed a threat to public safety.When asked by FOX News whether he regretted his crime, he would not answer."[It's] not your business. [It's] not your business," he said. "This is not your business."Mohammad calls himself a freedom fighter, not a terrorist. Either way, he is living free in Canada, which doesn't seem to bother his neighbors."No, I'm not concerned," said Gayle Cunningham, who lives nearby. "Maybe I should be. Should I be? I don't know."

As the Democrat Convention's carefully-scripted coronation of perhaps the least qualified major party presidential candidate in recent American history builds up to its climax, few have noticed that the convention's most pregnant political message may have already been delivered before it officially started.

It came in the form of a decision by Obama's campaign to feature the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Ms. Ingrid Mattson, at an "Interfaith Gathering" of Leftist religious luminaries the day before the convention opened (8/24).

In doing that, Obama and the Democrat leadership rather demonstratively bestowed their seal of approval on the largest and most important front organization of the American Muslim Brotherhood, a conspiratorial Islamist revolutionary movement dedicated, in their own words, to "a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands."

The implications of this political legitimization of a group dedicated to the destruction of our constitutional order are so profoundly disturbing that some background on what exactly ISNA and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) or Ikhwan Muslimi are is in order.

The Ikhwan beachhead in America was first established by a Saudi-funded group of Muslim Brothers in 1963 at the University of Illinois that became known as the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA).

This was only a year after the founding in Saudi Arabia of the main instrument for export of the violent Wahhabi/Salafi creed, the Muslim World League (MWL). The MWL, like other similar organizations that followed, were the fruit of the symbiotic nexus between Ikhwan organizational talent and Saudi financial muscle, a key synergy that is the single most important determinant of the vast inroads radical Islamism has made in the West since then.

Acting according to the MB's principle of a unitary Islamic movement operating through many fronts, the MSA promptly spawned numerous Islamist professional, educational and publishing spinoffs, before founding the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in 1973, an ingenious Saudi-funded vehicle for control of American Islam through interest-free financing and holding the title of many Muslim institutions.

Finally, in 1981, the Brotherhood and its Wahhabi patrons felt the need to set up yet another instrument of control of the proliferating American Islamist networks by incorporating ISNA in Indiana as an umbrella organization of these networks. In the process, numerous front organizations that preceded ISNA by many years, including the MSA itself and NAIT, became ISNA constituent organizations.

What never changed was the unremitting hostility of the organization to fundamental American values like democracy, separation of church and state and human rights and its dedication to the ultimate objective of establishing a world-wide Islamic rule under barbaric shariah law.

Under the guidance of well-known Islamist zealots like Muzamil Siddiqui, Jamal Badawi, Abdalla Idris Ali, Iqbal Unus, Ihsan Bagby and many others, ISNA has through the years aided and abetted all manner of extremist and terrorist causes, while mouthing disingenuous calls for interfaith dialog.

While it has been able to fool numerous politically correct useful idiots, ISNA has been less successful with U.S. law enforcement authorities who listed it (and its affiliate NAIT) as an unindicted co-conspirator in a recent terrorism funding case.

Moreover, attempts to have its name expunged from that list were tersely rejected by the U.S. government citing numerous evidentiary exhibits establishing ISNA's "intimate relationship" with the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist organizations.

ISNA is intimately involved in yet another major Islamist effort to undermine American society that has so far escaped public scrutiny. Through its affiliate NAIT, it owns and runs the IMAN shariah finance mutual fund which is part of the global financial Jihad effort aiming to legitimize a medieval doctrine that mandates violent jihad against non-Muslims and the killing of adulterers and homosexuals.

Interestingly, the IMAN fund was known as the Dow Jones Islamic Fund until last March when it was revealed that the chairman of its shariah advisory board, Mufti Taqi Usmani, had long called for violence against infidels and sanctioned suicide terrorism.

No less puzzling is the fact that NAIT, which owns most shares of the for-profit multi-million dollar mutual fund and on whose board Ingrid Mattson sits, does not file tax returns since it ostensibly makes less than $25,000 per year.

Perhaps the best evidence of what ISNA really stands for is provided by its own poll of the attitudes of its membership conducted in 2006. By nearly a 3 to 1 margin ISNA members believed that the U.S. government had advance knowledge of the September 11, 2001 attacks and allowed them to happen and a majority did not believe that the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the July 7, 2005 bombings in London were Moslem.

Despite such overwhelming evidence of ISNA"s subversive nature, many are willing to give it the benefit of doubt. This is at least partly due to the fact that Ingrid Mattson is the first woman head of a major Islamic organization and is especially skillful in beating the bogus interfaith dialog drums.

For the Obama campaign and more than a few others, this has by itself provided the needed proof that ISNA is a picture of moderation.

Indeed, how can all the lurid tales of Islamist misogyny, gay-bashing and hate-spewing against Christians and Jews be true when ISNA now has a leader that is seemingly an emancipated and enlightened woman dedicated to multiculturalism and understanding? A fair question, it seems, until one starts digging behind the headlines.

It doesn't take long to discover that far from being a new emancipated leader, Ms. Mattson is little more than a useful prop serving the Islamist agenda.

Shortly after she was elected ISNA president in August 2006, the organization's secretary-general Sayyid Syeed announced that this does not change the prohibition against women leading mixed-gender prayer and that Mattson will only be allowed to lead "ritual worship for women." Mattson herself promptly opined that Moslem women are quite content with their segregated prayer space in the mosque.

Nor has she raised even the slightest objection to numerous misogynist statements by her fellow-ISNA executives and Islamist ideologues, Muzammil Siddiqui and Jamal Badawi, who have openly supported shariah restrictions on women traveling by themselves, socialization between men and women, or making friends with non-Muslims and endorsed polygamy and the husband's right to beat his wife.

Or, for that matter, their implicit endorsement of the death penalty for homosexuality. Not to mention ISNA's vituperative anti-Semitism, rejection of basic American norms such as the separation of church and state and its support for the imposition of shariah law in Muslim communities in the West.

It would be interesting to find out whether key democratic constituencies such as feminists and gay and lesbian groups are aware of the real agenda of this newly anointed partner of the Obama coalition for change. Just as it would be for rank and file Americans to learn that as far as ISNA's leadership is concerned American Moslems "should not melt in any pot except the Muslim Brotherhood pot."

In the interest of fairness, the Obama campaign is not the only one to buy uncritically ISNA's deceitful protestations. The Bush Administration, which has had seven years to figure it out, is even guiltier in failing to understand the deeply subversive nature of the Muslim Brotherhood networks and has often acted as a willing dupe to the Islamists.

The number two man at the Pentagon, Gordon England, for instance, followed the advice of a likely Islamist plant in his office - who had lied about his background - in terminating Stephen Coughlin, one of the few genuine experts in the U.S. government on shariah law. Not surprisingly, Mr. England had earlier legitimized through his presence an ISNA convention which teemed with radical Islamist speakers and messages, making himself a useful idiot par excellence in the process.

Not to be overdone, the Administration's former public diplomacy czar, Karen Hughes, whose impeccable credentials as a close personal friend of President Bush were only exceeded by her impeccable cluelessness about radical Islam, proudly declared ISNA members to be her frontline troops in public diplomacy.

The documented failure of the outgoing administration to come to terms with the existence of a well-organized Islamist fifth column in America does not make the democrats? new infatuation with a key part of this fifth column any less serious. Especially because, as the party has veered sharply to the left, parts of it have increasingly embraced radical Islam as a new ally. These have ranged from the ACLU, which has openly allied itself with organizations like ISNA and CAIR, to the Greens who have lately been debating whether to engage radical Islam in a joint struggle to destroy capitalism.

These feelings are fully reciprocated on the other side as the Islamists increasingly see the Left as a potential ally in its quest to undermine Western civilization and replace it with shariah rule.

Following the Democrat mid-term election victories in 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood website ikhwanweb argued that the Democrat victory will work in favor of Moslems and the Muslim Brotherhood inside and outside the U.S. and expressed the hope that the democrats will begin dealing directly with "moderate Islamists."

The Democrat Convention's legitimization of Ingrid Mattson and ISNA would seem to justify such hopes further. One can only hope that the majority of patriotic Democrat voters would soon start asking questions about Obama's new Islamist partners.

Alex Alexiev was for 20 years a senior analyst with the national security division of the Rand Corporation, directing numerous research projects for the Department of Defense and other agencies. Currently vice-president for research at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, his next book is Jihad on Wall Street: Shariah Finance in the War Against America.

[Note on "Moslem" vs. "Muslim". Until recently, the normal transliteration for "one who submits" was Moslem. Somehow, this became politically incorrect, with those-who-submit demanding a spelling of Muslim. Since Arabic has no written vowels, the actual transliteration from Arabic into English should be "Mslm." TTP will always opt for the politically incorrect - so in every case other than the actual title of an organization - it will render Mslm as Moslem, never Muslim.]

This could have gone in the Immigration thread as well. As with most things from the NYT, caveat lector:

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul A. Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.

Immigrant vs. Immigrant This is the fourth article in a series that explores efforts by government and others to compel illegal immigrants to leave the United States.

Mr. Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis’ demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.

“The Latino is very humble,” said Mr. Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. “But they are arrogant,” he said of the Somali workers. “They act like the United States owes them.”

Mr. Garcia was among more than 1,000 Latino and other workers who protested a decision last month by the plant’s management to cut their work day — and their pay — by 15 minutes to give scores of Somali workers time for evening prayers.

After several days of strikes and disruptions, the plant’s management abandoned the plan.

But the dispute peeled back a layer of civility in this southern Nebraska city of 47,000, revealing slow-burning racial and ethnic tensions that have been an unexpected aftermath of the enforcement raids at workplaces by federal immigration authorities.

Grand Island is among a half dozen or so cities where discord has arisen with the arrival of Somali workers, many of whom were recruited by employers from elsewhere in the United States after immigration raids sharply reduced their Latino work forces.

The Somalis are by and large in this country legally as political refugees and therefore are not singled out by immigration authorities.

In some of these places, including Grand Island, this newest wave of immigrant workers has had the effect of unifying the other ethnic populations against the Somalis and has also diverted some of the longstanding hostility toward Latino immigrants among some native-born residents.

“Every wave of immigrants has had to struggle to get assimilated,” said Margaret Hornady, the mayor of Grand Island and a longtime resident of Nebraska. “Right now, it’s so volatile.”

The federal immigration crackdown has hit meat- and poultry-packing plants particularly hard, with more than 2,000 immigrant workers in at least nine places detained since 2006 in major raids, most on immigration violations.

Struggling to fill the grueling low-wage jobs that attract few American workers, the plants have placed advertisements in immigrant newspapers and circulated fliers in immigrant neighborhoods.

Some companies, like Swift & Company, which owned the plant in Grand Island until being bought up by the Brazilian conglomerate JBS last year, have made a particular pitch for Somalis because of their legal status. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing civil war have settled in the United States since the 1990s, with the largest concentration in Minnesota.

But the companies are learning that in trying to solve one problem they have created another.

Early last month, about 220 Somali Muslims walked off the job at a JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., saying the company had prevented them from observing their prayer schedule. (More than 100 of the workers were later fired.)

Days later, a poultry company in Minnesota agreed to allow Muslim workers prayer breaks and the right to refuse handling pork products, settling a lawsuit filed by nine Somali workers.

In August, the management of a Tyson chicken plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., designated a Muslim holy day as a paid holiday, acceding to a demand by Somali workers. The plant had originally agreed to substitute the Muslim holy day for Labor Day, but reinstated Labor Day after a barrage of criticism from non-Muslims.

In some workplaces, newly arrived Somali Muslims have not protested their working conditions. That has been the case at Agriprocessors, a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. About 150 Somali Muslims have found jobs there, most of them recruited by a staffing company after the plant lost about half its work force in an immigration raid in May.

Jack Shandley, a senior vice president for JBS U.S.A., said in an e-mail message that “integrating persons of diverse backgrounds regularly presents new and different issues.”

“Religious accommodation is only one workplace diversity issue that has been addressed,” Mr. Shandley said.

Nationwide, employment discrimination complaints by Muslim workers have more than doubled in the past decade, to 607 in the 2007 fiscal year, from 285 in the 1998 fiscal year, according to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has sent representatives to Grand Island to interview Somali workers.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers to discriminate based on religion and says that employers must “reasonably accommodate” religious practices. But the act offers some exceptions, including instances when adjustments would cause “undue hardship” on the company’s business interests.

=========

(Page 2 of 3)

The new tensions here extend well beyond the walls of the plant. Scratch beneath Grand Island’s surface and there is resentment, discomfort and mistrust everywhere, some residents say — between the white community and the various immigrant communities; between the older immigrant communities, like the Latinos, and the newer ones, namely the Somalis and the Sudanese, another refugee community that has grown here in recent years; and between the Somalis, who are largely Muslim, and the Sudanese, who are largely Christian.

In dozens of interviews here, white, Latino and other residents seemed mostly bewildered, if not downright suspicious, of the Somalis, very few of whom speak English.

“I kind of admire all the effort they make to follow that religion, but sometimes you have to adapt to the workplace,” said Fidencio Sandoval, a plant worker born in Mexico who has become an American citizen. “A new culture comes in with their demands and says, ‘This is what we want.’ This is kind of new for me.”

Ms. Hornady, the mayor, suggested somewhat apologetically that she had been having difficulty adjusting to the presence of Somalis. She said she found the sight of Somali women, many of whom wear Muslim headdresses, or hijabs, “startling.”

“I’m sorry, but after 9/11, it gives some of us a turn,” she said.

Not only do the hijabs suggest female subjugation, Ms. Hornady said, but the sight of Muslims in town made her think of Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the United States.

“I know that that’s horrible and that’s prejudice,” she said. “I’m working very hard on it.”

She added, “Aren’t a lot of thoughtful Americans struggling with this?”

For their part, the Somalis say they feel aggrieved and not particularly welcome.

“A lot of people look at you weird — they judge you,” said Abdisamad Jama, 22, a Somali who moved to Grand Island two years ago to work as an interpreter at the plant and now freelances. “Or sometimes they will say, ‘Go back to your country.’ ”

Founded in the mid-19th century by German immigrants, Grand Island gradually became more diverse in the mid- and late-20th century with the arrival of Latino workers, mainly Mexicans.

The Latinos came at first to work in the agricultural fields; later arrivals found employment in the meatpacking plant. Refugees from Laos and, in the past few years, Sudan followed, and many of them also found work in the plant, which is now the city’s largest employer, with about 2,700 workers.

In December 2006, in an event that would deeply affect the city and alter its uneasy balance of ethnicities, immigration authorities raided the plant and took away more than 200 illegal Latino workers. Another 200 or so workers quit soon afterward.

The raid was one of six sweeps by federal agents at plants owned by Swift, gutting the company of about 1,200 workers in one day and forcing the plants to slow their operations.

Many of the Somalis who eventually arrived to fill those jobs were practicing Muslims and their faith obliges them to pray at five fixed times every day. In Grand Island, the workers would grab prayer time whenever they could, during scheduled rest periods or on restroom breaks. But during the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims fast in daylight hours and break their fast in a ritualistic ceremony at sundown. A more formal accommodation of their needs was necessary, the Somali workers said.

Last year, the Somalis here demanded time off for the Ramadan ceremony. The company refused, saying it could not afford to let so many workers step away from the production line at one time. Dozens of Somalis quit, though they eventually returned to work.

The situation repeated itself last month. Dennis Sydow, the plant’s vice president and general manager, said a delegation of Somali workers approached him on Sept. 10 about allowing them to take their dinner break at 7:30 p.m., near sundown, rather than at the normal time of 8 to 8:30.

Mr. Sydow rejected the request, saying the production line would slow to a crawl and the Somalis’ co-workers would unfairly have to take up the slack.

The Somalis said their co-workers did not offer a lot of support. “Latinos were sometimes saying, ‘Don’t pray, don’t pray,’ ” said Abdifatah Warsame, 21.

=======

e 3 of 3)

After the Somalis went out on strike on Sept. 15, the plant’s management and the union brokered a deal the next day that would have shifted the dinner break to 7:45 p.m., close enough to sundown to satisfy the Somalis. Because of the plant’s complex scheduling rules, the new dinner break would have also required an earlier end to the shift, potentially cutting the work day by 15 minutes.

Word of the accord spread quickly throughout the non-Somali work force, though the reports were infected with false rumors of pay raises for the Somalis and more severe cuts in the work day for everyone.

In a counterprotest on Sept. 17, more than 1,000 Latino and Sudanese workers lined up alongside white workers in opposition to the concessions to the Somalis.

“We had complaints from the whites, Hispanics and Sudanese,” said Abdalla Omar, 26, one of the Somali strikers.

The union and the plant management backed down, reverting to the original dinner schedule. More than 70 Somalis, including Mr. Omar and Mr. Warsame, stormed out of the plant and did not return; they either quit or were fired.

Since then, Ramadan has ended and work has returned to normal at the plant, but most everyone — management, the union and the employees — says the root causes of the disturbances have not been fully addressed. A sizeable Somali contingent remains employed at the factory — Somali leaders say the number is about 100; the union puts the figure at more than 300, making similar disruptions possible next year.

“Right now, this is a real kindling box,” said Daniel O. Hoppes, president of the local chapter of the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers.

Xawa Ahmed, 48, a Somali, moved to Grand Island from Minnesota last month to help organize the Somali community. A big part of her work, Ms. Ahmed said, will be to help demystify the Somalis who remain.

“We’re trying to make people understand why we do these things, why we practice this religion, why we live in America,” she said. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding.”

**I guess they don't want to make CAIR angry by showing the true face of islam.**

The Case of the Missing Honor Killing By Phyllis CheslerFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, November 24, 2008

Psychologically, we tend to believe that what we see with our own eyes, especially if it is "acted out" for us, is the "truth." Our brains are wired so that visual images assume a permanent reality--even if that reality is a computer-generated or photo-shopped Big Lie. Mohammed al-Dura did not die in his fathers' arms even though that carefully staged image was seen round the world. Israel did not massacre anyone in Jenin even though that Big Lie has also taken on a life of its own.

I'm glad that America's Most Wanted chose to dramatize the honor killing of Sarah and Amina Said in Dallas on Jan 1, 2008 by their father Yaser Abdul Said, who has been missing ever since. I hope the program helps aid in his capture. I applaud on-camera narrator John Walsh, who has turned his own grief at the loss of his child into something positive for so many others.

However, the dramatization was oddly, perhaps even purposefully misleading. Key figures were either fatally mischaracterized or were entirely missing in action. Malevolent motives, which had no basis in fact, were attributed to the innocent girls and yet their mother, Patricia, was not presented as the collaborator in their murder which she surely was. Their older brother, Islam, a foul-mouthed man who bullied his mother, harassed and monitored his sisters, and ultimately justified their being honor murdered, was not in the TV picture

Why would America's Most Wanted do this?

Patricia, the girls' mother, is and was a white, blonde, blue-eyed Texas-born Christian woman, a child really, when Yaser first married her. The dramatization chose to portray her as an Arab- or Hispanic-looking woman. Although the program has an on-camera interview with the real Patricia, their choice of an Arab-looking actress to play Patricia accomplishes the following:

Viewers might think that the girls really were rebelling against their culture when, in fact, their mother and her extended family are Christian-Americans whose customs the girls were choosing. Second, by failing to show the real Patricia as she enticed her daughters to come home, promised them that their father only wanted to make up, the program blurs, renders indistinct, the fact that this was a classic honor killing, one which always involves a family collaboration. That is probably why they did not include the girls' older brother Islam. He would have also visually and verbally confirmed the concept that an honor killing is characterized by family collaboration. Of course, Islam may also have cursed the producers and threatened to kill or sue them if he was included. Nice guy.

In other words folks, the producers did not want to inflame any white "ethnic" or "racist" passion by showing an Arab Muslim male tyrant dominating a white Christian American woman (his wife) and their daughters. The program wanted no part of the long, historical stench which has attended the usually false, but sometimes true allegations about "Indians" or "blacks" raping white women, and the terrible lynchings that have occurred thereafter.

But, even more: The producers did not want to be charged with 'Islamophobia" by showing what a real, full-blown honor killing looks like. Further, they wanted to appear and present a "balanced" re-creation even if they had to make things up in order to do so. Thus, they showed the two girls as plotting revenge or preemptive self-defense against their father. If only Sarah and Amina had followed through on this imaginary course of action, they might be alive today. But, knowing how American law works, they might also be in jail for life.

While the program tried to pack a lot of information into a limited amount of time, they did not show how brutally and continuously Yaser physically and verbally assaulted his daughters, tapped their phone lines, monitored their computers, watched them and had them watched.

Finally, to be extra careful, the program chose an exceptionally soft-spoken Muslim boy, Zohair Zaid, the girls' friend, who said some strong, true things but who also presented such a peaceful face of Islam. It does exist and yet--what a perfect foil to Yaser Said's cold-blooded murderousness. One cancels the other out and we are left with ... confusion.

Zohair advised the girls to take their fathers' threat to kill them seriously and to go to the police. He also told them that "once you run away, you can never come back. He will become totally insane once he's lost control of you...His honor and dignity (will be) scarred."

What a shame they did not listen to Zohair but instead listened to their murderous mother. On camera, a subdued, soft-spoken Patricia, actually defends Yaser. She says that when she would punish or ground the girls, that Yaser would try to protect them, go easy on them. When she was asked whether Yaser was upset when he discovered that his daughters were dating Christian boyfriends, Patricia says: "I don't think so. He always said that we could work (everything) out as a family."

Either Patricia is dull-witted, exceptionally passive, even mentally retarded; was battered, brainwashed, primed to turn against her own daughters; is one hellava cunning criminal; or, long ago, converted to Yaser's brand of Arabian-Egyptian Islamism, shares Yaser's view that disobedient daughters should be punished, even killed. A typical Islamist mother.

I want to know why the police have not arrested her and why America's Most Wanted has failed to portray her accurately.

I asked Gail Gartrell, the girls' great-aunt, what she thought of the program. Viewing it made her angry and it broke her heart. Gartrell feels that the program failed to present this double homicide as a full-blown honor killing. She quotes John Walsh who said: "Some people say this was an honor killing. But, there's no honor in this."

How dare he. I have worked hard to educate and get the word out about honor killings and he diminished what honor killings entail. You know, they are usually well planned out in advance and others in the family involve themselves as well.

How about this? Yaser shoots the girls, gets out of the cab without a single drop of blood on him, after 11 shots were fired at close range, and simply walks away. Who picked him up? He did not leave there on foot. Someone picked him up and fled with him.

How about it? Who could have driven Yaser away?

I have to give them credit for one thing. They had the means (Was it money? Or attention?) to get the otherwise reclusive Patricia to talk to them on camera. Check her out for yourselves. As I said she's soft-spoken, passive, subdued.

But this is also how an honor killer looks.

Perhaps this is also another face of jihad. Think about it. What if an American-despising Yaser was also interested in marrying Patricia in order to get a green card, become a citizen--and biologically produce American citizen jihadists? Might the fifth column we have long feared, come from such a source? Yaser is known to have owned many knives and guns, known to have taken his family to "Jihad military camps." At least, they are posed wearing keffiyehs and brandishing weapons. Maybe he was only joking. Maybe his annual visit back home to Egypt was only to visit another wife and family. Maybe Yaser is just a petty criminal and woman-hater.

But what if Yaser married as a form of jihad? What if his daughters were in turn expected to marry other Egyptian jihadists who would pay dowries for them?

I hope the FBI is considering all these questions.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She has just published The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (1976). Her website is www.phyllis-chesler.com.

DALLAS, Texas (AFP) — The leaders of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States were found guilty Monday of acting as a front for Palestinian militants in the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history.

It was a major victory in the White House's legal "war on terror" and comes after a mistrial was declared last year in the case involving the now defunct Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, charged with funneling 12 million dollars to Hamas.

Family members could be heard sobbing in the Dallas courtroom as guilty verdicts were read on all 108 charges of providing material support to terrorists, money laundering and tax fraud.

One woman cried out: "My dad is not a criminal! He's a human!"

Holy Land was one of several Muslim organizations the Bush administration closed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for allegedly raising money for overseas Islamic extremists.

Muslim charities that remain open have reported significant drops in contributions because of fears of prosecution even as juries rendered acquittals or convictions of lesser charges in two other high-profile terror financing cases in Florida and Chicago. The US Justice Department vowed in October 2007 to retry the five former charity organizers in the Holy Land case after jurors could not agree on verdicts on nearly 200 charges and a new jury was seated in mid-September.

Over the past two months, the government has presented largely the same evidence, hoping to prove that Holy Land was created in the late 1980s to gather donations from deep-pocketed American Muslims to support the then-newly formed Hamas movement resisting the Israeli occupation.

Hamas -- a multi-faceted Islamist political, social and armed movement which now controls the Gaza Strip -- was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1995 and the trial centered over whether Holy Land continued to support the group after this point.

Prosecutors did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in terrorist activity. Instead, they said humanitarian aid was used to promote Hamas and allow it to divert existing funds to militant activities.

"The government showed in a streamlined case that where special assistance to the families of terrorists is concerned, cash is the moral equivalent of a car bomb," Peter Margulies, a Roger Williams University law professor who studies terrorism financing cases."Going forward, however, the government must be more pro-active about furnishing guidance to Muslim-Americans who merely wish to fulfill their religious obligations."

Defense attorneys said the charity was a non-political organization which operated legally to get much-needed aid to Palestinians living in squalor under the Israeli occupation, and argued that the chief reasons their clients were on trial are family ties.

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' political leader in Syria, is the brother of defendant Mufid Abdulqader, a top Holy Land fundraiser whose Palestinian band played at the charity's events and now faces up to 55 years in jail.

Meshaal's deputy, Mousa Abu Marzook, is a cousin of defendant Mohammad el-Mezain, a foundation co-founder, and is married to the cousin of defendant Ghassan Elashi, former Holy Land board chairman. Mezain faces up to 15 years in prison while Elashi, who is already serving six and a half years for export law violations, faces up to life in prison. The brother of defendant Shukri Abu Baker, Holy Land's former chief executive officer, is Jamal Issa, former Hamas leader in Sudan and its current head in Yemen. Baker, the former chief executive officer of Holy Land, faces up to life in prison. A fifth defendant is Abdulrahman Odeh, Holy Land's New Jersey representative, who faces up to 55 years in jail.

A Scottish judge recently bent the law to benefit a polygamous household. The case involved a Muslim male who drove 64 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone – usually grounds for an automatic loss of one's driving license. The defendant's lawyer explained his client's need to speed: "He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and sleeps with one one night and stays with the other the next on an alternate basis. Without his driving licence he would be unable to do this on a regular basis." Sympathetic to the polygamist's plight, the judge permitted him to retain his license.

Monogamy, this ruling suggests, long a foundation of Western civilization, is silently eroding under the challenge of Islamic law. Should current trends continue, polygamy could soon be commonplace.

Since the 1950s, Muslim populations have grown in Western Europe and North America via immigration and conversion; with their presence has grown the Islamic form of polygyny (one man married to more than one woman). Estimates find 2,000 or more British polygamous men, 14,000 or 15,000-20,000 harems in Italy, 30,000 harems in France, and 50,000-100,000 polygamists in the United States.

Some imams openly acknowledge conducting polygamous marriage ceremonies: Khalil Chami reports that he is asked almost weekly to conduct such ceremonies in Sydney. Aly Hindy reports having "blessed" more than 30 such nuptials in Toronto.

Social acceptance is also growing. Academics justify it, while politicians blithely meet with polygamists or declare that Westerners should "find a way to live with it" and journalists describe polygamy with empathy, sympathy, and compassion. Islamists argue polygamy's virtues and call for its official recognition.

Polygamy has made key legal advances in 2008. (For fuller details, see my blog, "Harems Accepted in the West.") At least six Western jurisdictions now permit harems on the condition that these were contracted in jurisdictions where polygamy is legal, including India and Muslim-majority countries from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Morocco.United Kingdom: Bigamy is punishable by up to seven years in jail but the law recognizes harems already formed in polygamy-tolerant countries. The Department of Work and Pensions pays couples up to £92.80 (US$140) a week in social benefits, and each multiculturally-named "additional spouse" receives £33.65. The Treasury states that "Where a man and a woman are married under a law which permits polygamy, and either of them has an additional spouse, the Tax Credits (Polygamous Marriages) Regulations 2003 allow them to claim tax credits as a polygamous unit." Additionally, harems may be eligible for additional housing benefits to reflect their need for larger properties.

The Netherlands: The Dutch justice minister, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, has announced that polygamous Muslim marriages should not be dealt with through the legal system but via dialogue.

Belgium: The Constitutional Court took steps to ease the reunification of harems formed outside the country.

Italy: A court in Bologna allowed a Muslim male immigrant to bring the mothers of his two children into the country on the grounds that the polygamous marriages had been legally contracted.

Australia: The Australian newspaper reports "it is illegal to enter into a polygamous marriage. But the federal government, like Britain, recognises relationships that have been legally recognised overseas, including polygamous marriages. This allows second wives and children to claim welfare and benefits."

Ontario, Canada: Canadian law calls for polygamy to be punished by a prison term but the Ontario Family Law Act accepts "a marriage that is actually or potentially polygamous, if it was celebrated in a jurisdiction whose system of law recognizes it as valid."

Thus, for the cost of two airplane tickets, Muslims potentially can evade Western laws. (One wonders when Mormons will also wake to this gambit.) Rare countries (such as Ireland) still reject harems; generally, as David Rusin of Islamist Watch notes, "governments tend to look the other way as the conjugal mores of seventh-century Arabia … take root in our backyards."

At a time when Western marriage norms are already under challenge, Muslims are testing legal loopholes and even seeking taxpayer support for multiple brides. This development has vast significance: just as the concept of one man, one woman marriage has shaped the West's economic, cultural, and political development, the advance of Islamic law (Shari‘a) will profoundly change life as we know it.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

A Scottish judge recently bent the law to benefit a polygamous household. The case involved a Muslim male who drove 64 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone – usually grounds for an automatic loss of one's driving license. The defendant's lawyer explained his client's need to speed: "He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and sleeps with one one night and stays with the other the next on an alternate basis. Without his driving licence he would be unable to do this on a regular basis." Sympathetic to the polygamist's plight, the judge permitted him to retain his license.

Gotta love the Judge; he does have a sense of humor.

But on a serious note, BBG what do you think? Is polygamy so bad? Should it be illegal? Or do you think it should it be allowed between consenting adults regardless of their religious affiliation?

But on a serious note, BBG what do you think? Is polygamy so bad? Should it be illegal? Or do you think it should it be allowed between consenting adults regardless of their religious affiliation?

One sec, let me ask my wife. . . .

Rats, she's opposed to my nominees.

As stated elsewhere, I care not at all what consenting adults do behind closed doors. With that said, any policy should be consistent (yo, Mormons), should not be used as an immigration dodge, should be good for goose or gander, and shouldn't be a vehicle to get lots of folks on the public dole. As also stated elsewhere, I'm pretty uncomfortable with patriarchal systems claiming free choice as they keep their women segregated in veils behind locked doors. Choice should be in the Western sense, instead of the choose any option off this list of one we've discussed elsewhere.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) had a rough 24 hours earlier this week. Given the organization’s ties to the seditious Muslim Brotherhood and specifically its role in advancing the stealth jihad used to insinuate into this country the totalitarian program authoritative Islam calls “sharia,” though, any bad CAIR day is a good day for America.

The problems for CAIR started a week ago Sunday night when its co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, was served with a court summons during his group’s annual fund-raising dinner in Arlington, Va. In front of some 700 people and the one Muslim member of Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), Awad and several other CAIR officials were formally put on notice that they and their organization were being sued for racketeering and fraud by four former clients. The suit seeks, in addition to damages, to shut CAIR down and to enjoin the defendants from engaging in public-interest legal work in the future.

According to the plaintiffs, they were defrauded by Morris Days, a purported “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” at CAIR’s now-disestablished Maryland/Virginia chapter in Herndon, Virginia. As the complaint details, he was not, in fact, an attorney and allegedly failed to provide the plaintiffs with legal services for which they had paid. According to internal CAIR documents referenced in the complaint, there may be hundreds of other members who were injured by this CAIR-Days fraud.

If so, the other victims may be unaware of what has been perpetrated upon them since CAIR allegedly covered up its failure to check on Days’s background and his misconduct while in its employ. The organization is alleged not only to have concealed this massive fraud from their clients. It also failed to notify law-enforcement authorities, the relevant bar associations, or the public about the wrongdoing.

Instead, according to the complaint, when confronted with members angry about Days’s non-performance, the organization compounded its misdeeds by engaging in a cover-up. CAIR claimed that the “attorney” had not actually been in its employ and concealed the fact that Days had been terminated for engaging in criminal fraud.

Worse yet, the plaintiffs allege that CAIR National officials compelled their clients seeking to have their legal fees refunded to sign a release precluding any revelation of this fraud to the appropriate authorities or the press — on pain of being sued by CAIR for up to $25,000. According to a press release issued by the plaintiff’s counsel, my friend and colleague David Yerushalmi: “This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR client-victims in the dark such that to this day they have not learned that Days is not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which Days and CAIR publicly claimed credit.”

Joining Nihad Awad as named defendants in the federal lawsuit against CAIR are: Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the organization’s board during the period of the alleged misconduct; Tahra Goraya, at the time, the national director of CAIR; manager of the “civil rights” division of CAIR, Khadijah Athman; Nadhira al-Khalili, CAIR’s in-house legal counsel; and Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, respectively the group’s director and coordinator of communications.

If allegations that CAIR exploits and abuses Muslims in America — rather than, as it endlessly claims, serving and protecting their rights — were not bad enough, a federal jury in Dallas dealt the organization another, potentially devastating, body blow. Jurors found principals of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development guilty as charged in a terrorism-financing conspiracy. CAIR had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.

Indeed, in the course of the original trial last year and the just-concluded retrial, the prosecution introduced into evidence damning information about CAIR’s ties not only to the Holy Land Foundation but to the Muslim Brotherhood. The precursor to CAIR was the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), itself a front for Hamas. IAP was listed as one of a large number of associated groups in a 1991 internal Brotherhood memorandum. The memo laid out the MB’s work in America as a “kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

As Steven Emerson’s invaluable Investigative Project on Terrorism has observed:

In June 2007, federal prosecutors…designate[d] CAIR as a co-conspirator because of its associations with the US Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. Prosecutors say that the Palestine Committee was created specifically to help Hamas through financial and political support in the United States. CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad (its current chairman emeritus) is listed as an individual committee member and is an unindicted co-conspirator, too. In other cases, CAIR employees have been prosecuted for engaging in their own conspiracies.

The allegations about CAIR’s conduct in the Days’ affair and the guilty verdict rendered against its co-conspirators in the Holy Land case point up a central reality: In the words of a wise lawyer, shady organizations, even stealth ones, invariably engage in culpable conduct no matter how sophisticated they are because there are too many loose ends and you cannot control all of them. It appears that that is what happened with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood’s stealth jihad operatives at CAIR.

Armed with the verdict of the Holy Land Foundation trial, it is high time for federal prosecutors to turn their sights on CAIR beyond simply naming them as an unindicted co-conspirator. By opening up their own investigation based on the evidence already proven in the HLF trial and the troubling allegations in the civil lawsuit, the government may soon turn a bad CAIR day into curtains for this Muslim Brotherhood engine for stealth jihad.

— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy and a contributor to NRO.

Anyone got any footage of the "vast majority of peaceful muslims" protesting Mumbai in the US?

**Cricket sounds**

Unfortunately I have not seen ANY footage of the "vast majority of peaceful muslims" protesting ANY of the violence instigated by Muslims.I seem to be the designated "liberal" aka "bleeding heart" on this forum, however you raise a valid point. Their silence says more than words.

There was one protest in India, by Indian muslims, regarding Mumbai. After 9/11, Iranian students protested in Iran, aside from those protests, the muslim world can only be bothered to protest Mohammed cartoons or Israel refusing to be rocketed any longer.

Top American Islamic Cleric Threatens U.S. on Egyptian TVPosted By Patrick Poole On January 7, 2009 @ 12:00 am Homeland Security, Israel, Middle East, US News, World News

Islamic cleric Salah Sultan appeared on Egypt’s Al-Nas TV last week and delivered a warning of death and destruction for America. Not only did he attack the U.S. for its military support of Israel in its fight against the Hamas terrorist organization, but he vowed retaliation such that more Americans would be killed than those Palestinians (and, presumably, Hamas terrorists) killed in the present conflict in Gaza, emphasizing that this would take place “soon”:

America, which gave [Israel] everything it needed in these battles, will suffer economic stagnation, ruin, destruction, and crime, which will surpass what is happening in Gaza. One of these days, the U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust. This will happen soon.

He also invoked a notorious Islamic hadith on the inevitable annihilation of the Jews by Muslims:

The stone, which is thrown at the Jews, hates these Jews, these Zionists, because Allah foretold, via His Prophet Muhammad, that Judgment Day will not come before the Jew and the Muslim fight. The Jew will hide behind stones and trees, and the stone and the tree will speak, saying: “Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” The only exception will be the Gharqad tree.

This harangue would be nothing new on television in the Islamic world; in fact, it is commonplace. What is unique about Sultan’s threats against America is that he holds U.S. permanent residency status and, according to one federal law enforcement official, travels regularly on a U.S. passport. And as I have reported [1] elsewhere, Sultan is pursuing U.S. citizenship (the status of his application is unknown due to federal privacy laws). Thus, Salah Sultan has lived quite comfortably for more than a decade under the protections of the very country he now threatens with death and destruction.

It should be noted that Salah Sultan is not some obscure figure in the American Islamic world. He serves as a member of the [2] Fiqh Council of North America. Touted as the top Islamic governing body in the U.S., the Fiqh Council is an arm of the Islamic Society of North America. Sultan founded and served as president of the [3] Islamic American University in Southfield, Michigan; he was the national director of tarbiyah (Islamic instruction) for the Muslim American Society; and he continues to operate the [4] American Council for Islamic Research, based in my hometown of Hilliard, Ohio.

Sultan’s Al-Nas TV appearance last week was [5] recorded and [6] translated by the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Curiously, as soon as MEMRI published the video clips of Sultan’s harangue, references to Sultan’s membership with the Fiqh Council were scrubbed from its website. His name has been removed from its [7] list of council members, even though he appeared there as recently as early last week. However, Sultan is still listed as a member on the Fiqh Council’s [8] brochure posted online (no doubt that will be remedied as soon as they are informed of this report).

This is not the first time that Sultan has been the subject of a MEMRI report for his statements made and activities conducted outside of the U.S. In July 2007, [9] MEMRI reported on a conference held in Doha, Qatar, in honor of Hamas spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has been banned from the U.S. since 1999 for his active support of Islamic terrorism. One of the conference’s keynote speakers was Hamas head Khaled Mash’al, a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. government who praised the terror cleric for his fatwa endorsing Hamas suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Sitting beside Mash’al and Qaradawi on the [10] speaker’s dais was none other than Salah Sultan, who gave two separate addresses during the conference honoring his mentor, Qaradawi.

This appearance by Sultan with two terrorist leaders directly violates the much-ballyhooed 2005 anti-terrorism fatwa issued by the Fiqh Council and signed by Sultan himself prohibiting such contact. Sultan also spoke at a July 2006 [11] pro-Hamas rally in Istanbul held by the extremist Saadet Party, which also featured an address by Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh — again, a glaring violation of the Fiqh Council’s terrorism fatwa.

But with several former Fiqh Council members in prison on terrorism-related charges (former council trustee Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently serving a 23-year prison sentence), deported for concealing their terrorism ties (Fawaz Damra), fingered in illegal terrorist fundraising (current member Muhammad Al-Hanooti), and named as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism trials (former chairman Taha Jaber Al-Awani), it should be apparent that the group is not rigorous in the fatwa’s enforcement. The Investigative Project has published a [12] dossier on the extensive roster of Fiqh Council members tied to the international Islamic terrorist network.

May 2006 saw Salah Sultan’s first starring role in a MEMRI report when [13] he was recorded on Al-Risala TV saying the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks, which he claimed were then used to declare war on Muslims worldwide, and also praising Osama bin Laden mentor and “specially designated global terrorist” Abd-al-Magid Al-Zindani (see the MEMRI [14] video clip and [15] transcript of Sultan’s Al-Risala interview). These comments were made just two weeks after the Columbus Dispatch published a [16] lengthy defense of Sultan as a moderate and the Central Ohio Islamic school that he was religious director of at the time.

Sultan’s Middle East media appearances also caught the eye of the Los Angeles Times in July 2007. The paper [17] cited him by name in an article by Borzou Daragahi on a group of Islamic clerics who “share the outlook of al-Qaeda” and who were “glorifying holy war” on Bahraini TV. Sultan was a regular guest on a program hosted by Muslim Brotherhood cleric Wagdi Ghoneim, who was expelled from the U.S. in December 2004 and banned from reentering for his ties to Islamic terrorism. As noted by Bahraini blogger and journalist Mahmoud Al-Yousif, their television program was [18] shut down by the Bahraini government after extensive criticism by members of parliament and the media.

Considering Salah Sultan’s lengthy résumé of Islamic extremism and regular association with designated terrorist leaders — much of it captured on video — you might think that the Department of Homeland Security would take some action with respect to his permanent residency status (despite owning a home in Ohio, he spends most of his time in Bahrain, disqualifying him for permanent residency), if not ban him completely from the country. You would be wrong, however. In fact, Sultan spent most of December touring mosques in Central Ohio before jetting off to Egypt last weekend for his Al-Nas interview.

But now that Salah Sultan is publicly inciting violence against the U.S. and predicting the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of our citizens through foreign media outlets, on what basis can Homeland Security officials continue to ignore this very real and extensively documented terror threat, his connections to leading U.S. Islamic groups notwithstanding? That remains to be seen.

Head of Muslim group with admitted Hamas ties to offer prayer at Obama inauguration

Mattson

Federal prosecutors last summer rejected claims that ISNA was unfairly named an unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case.

ISNA has admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is waging, in its own words, "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

And the head of ISNA is going to offer a prayer at Obama's inauguration.

"Muslim woman, rabbis to pray at inaugural service," by Rachel Zoll for AP, January 14 (thanks to all who sent this in):

...A prayer will be offered at the National Cathedral by Ingrid Mattson, the first woman president of the Islamic Society of North America, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. The Islamic Society, based in Indiana, is the nation's largest Muslim group....

WASHINGTON -- A Muslim scholar chosen to speak at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural prayer service Wednesday is the leader of a group that federal prosecutors say has ties to terrorists.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is one of many religious leaders scheduled to speak at the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.

Mattson has been the guest of honor at State Department dinners and has met with senior Pentagon officials during the Bush administration. She also spoke at a prayer service at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Mattson, who was elected president of the society in 2006, is a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn.

But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Plainfield, Ind.-based Islamic society to the group Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Neither Mattson nor her organization have been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they had "a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking" the group to Hamas and other radical groups.

Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Obama's inaugural committee, would not discuss the case or say whether the committee knew about it.

"She has a stellar reputation in the faith community," Douglass said Saturday night.

The existence of the court documents was first reported by Politico.

The Islamic Society of North America, which describes itself as "the nation's largest mainstream Muslim community-based organization," is fighting its inclusion on a list of coconspirators in the Dallas terrorism case against the Holy Land Foundation. In court documents, Mattson's group says it does not condone terrorism.

The court documents represent a complicated picture of the group.

Law enforcement agencies have used the organization's annual convention as part of its outreach to the Muslim community. The group has provided religious training to the FBI, according to court documents. Karen Hughes, a former Bush confidant and under secretary of state, called Mattson "a wonderful leader and role model for many, many people."

All this was going on while officials in the law enforcement and intelligence community apparently had evidence that the Islamic Society of North America had ties to terrorists and to the Holy Land Foundation. That foundation and five of its former leaders were convicted at a retrial in November of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.

Mark Pelavin, director of inter-religious affairs for the Union for Reform Judaism - another organization participating in the prayer service - called Mattson "a really important voice denouncing terrorism."

"Clearly, Dr. Mattson has been welcome throughout the government," he said. "I haven't found anyone anywhere who's found anything Dr. Mattson has said that's anything other than clearly denouncing terrorism in quite explicit Islamic terms."

Pelavin's group has a partnership with the Islamic Society to encourage members of mosques and synagogues to build ties nationwide.

Attorneys for Mattson's group wrote in court documents that it is not a subject or target of the Holy Land investigation. The group has worked with the Bush administration's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, according to court documents.

According to e-mails filed in the court case, one of the prosecutors seemed willing to ask the judge to remove the group from the list.

"I am sorry for the problems for your clients," Assistant U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks wrote in July 2007. "I hope to get something to you or file something with the court as soon as possible."

The Islamic Society helps certify Muslim chaplains for federal prisons. Mattson leads a program at the Hartford Seminary that trains Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military.

Mattson was one of about three dozen leaders, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and two former Republican congressmen, Vin Weber and Steve Bartlett, who developed a report released last fall on how the U.S. can fight extremism in the Muslim world.

U.S. War College member insists Islam does not "promote kidnappings, beheadings and other unlicensed hostile actions"

After posting a report regarding the U.S. Army War College's failure to examine Islam's war doctrines, including a faculty member's (Sherifa Zuhur's) assertions that Hamas has been "villainized" by the media, I received several e-mails from concerned people questioning Ms. Zuhur's "credentials" -- some alluded to her sincerity and intentions, or lack thereof -- to teach at the War College. One e-mail sent the following, rather telling, response made by Zuhur, after being asked to, "Tell us about your recent monographs on Islamic Rulings on Warfare and on Saudi Arabia":

I wrote Islamic Rulings on Warfare with my co-author Youssef Aboul-Enein to counteract the idea that Islam promotes kidnappings, beheadings and other unlicensed hostile actions as a matter of course.We explored the literature on jihad and other forms of fighting, their ethical and tactical aspects, how these appear in modernist, revisionist views and are manipulated by extremists. My monograph, Saudi Arabia: Islamic Threat, Political Reform, and the Global War on Terror, examines the factors leading up to calls for political reform in the Kingdom, and the campaign against al-Qa`ida fi Jazirat al-`Arabiyyah which has been operating there. I call into question the grand strategy of the global war on terror, but conclude that its recommendation of increasing freedom and political participation has value.

Interesting. One must wonder, however, about some of her blanket assertions: Islam does not "promote" kidnappings? What about the inconvenient fact that the founder of Islam, Muhammad, whose sunna, or "example," must be literally adhered, regularly kidnapped people -- particularly women? As Serge Trifkovic reminds us:

Having established himself as the ruler of Medina, Muhammad attacked the Jewish tribe of Banu-‘l-Mustaliq in December of A.D. 626. His followers slaughtered many Jewish tribesmen and looted thousands of their camels and sheep. They also kidnapped 500 of their women. The night after the battle Muhammad and his brigands staged an orgy of rape. As one of the brigands, Abu Sa’id Khudri, later remembered, a legal problem needed to be resolved first: In order to obtain ransom from the surviving Jews for the captive women, Muslims had pledged not to violate them:We were lusting after women and chastity had become too hard for us, but we wanted to get the ransom money for our prisoners. So we wanted to use the Azl [coitus interruptus]. We asked the Prophet about it and he said: "You are not under any obligation not to do it like that [contained in Sahih Bukhari, second only to the Koran in authority]."

More to the point, Koran 4:3 legitimizes forceful concubinage -- that is, forcefully kidnapping women and making them sex-slaves -- slaves who are counted as animals at that.As for beheadings, perhaps Zuhur is not familiar with Koranic verses 5:33, 8:12, and 47:4 -- all of which sanction beheading the infidel? Koran 47:4 simply states “Therefore, when ye meet the infidels, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives."

As for "other unlicensed hostile action," where does one begin? Here's one: Muhammad had assassins go to the home of a matron figure named Umm Qirfa, tie each of her legs to a different camel, and then drive the camels in separate directions until the old woman was split asunder (see Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari). He also ordered the assassination of an old poet, and legitimized lying and deception to do so -- whence the famous Islamic maxim, "War is Deceit."

One therefore has no choice but to conclude that Ms Zuhur is being either disingenuous (taqiyya/kitman) or ignorant (sign of the times), or blindly utopian (typical academic) or all of the above -- either way, not fit to instruct post-9/11 America's forthcoming guardians. It's bad enough that this sort of fluff counts as "authoritative" around government types; but that it has also come to permeate one of the last bastions of American security, the U.S. Army War College -- just consider its name -- is beyond ominous.

If the opening quote said, U.S. War College member insists Judaism (Israel) does not "promote kidnappings, beheadings and other unlicensed hostile actions" what would you say? Would you answer, "that's true?" And similar to this author, but instead of the Koran, would you refer to the Bible as your source document?

Yet, if you read the Old Testament in the Bible, you will find rape, slavery, mass slaughter and looting; wonton extermination of everyone in entire villages and towns,etc. committed by Israel against enemies of Israel. The Old Testament, like the Koran is actually quite violent and often without mercy.

Yet, if you read the Old Testament in the Bible, you will find rape, slavery, mass slaughter and looting; wonton extermination of everyone in entire villages and towns,etc. committed by Israel against enemies of Israel. The Old Testament, like the Koran is actually quite violent and often without mercy.

And both Judaism and Christianity have since undergone reformations and refute Old Testament of barbarism. Islam, alas, has not, but that doesn't keep some of those around here from carrying water for those whose highest aspiration is to return humanity to that dark age.

My only point in my previous post was that both the Koran AND the Old Testament of the Bible have a dark side.

Body-by-Guinness then said;"And both Judaism and Christianity have since undergone reformations and refute Old Testament of barbarism. Islam, alas, has not, but that doesn't keep some of those around here from carrying water for those whose highest aspiration is to return humanity to that dark age."

You are right; that is the crux of the matter. Terrible acts were committed and condoned, but Judaism and Christianity have moved on and now refute barbarism. And you are also right; "Islam, alas, has not...". Rather, as you pointed out, they seem to want to return humanity to the dark age. That is a huge irreconcilable difference.

My only point in my previous post was that both the Koran AND the Old Testament of the Bible have a dark side.

You so relentlessly pursue moral equivalence I assumed you were at it again. Now that you've acknowledged Islam's dark side, do you think it's perhaps time to stop carrying water for those who most militantly seek to impose that darkness here and now?

"My only point in my previous post was that both the Koran AND the Old Testament of the Bible have a dark side."

Ummm, was this ever really an issue?

Or given your belief that " Judaism and Christianity have moved on and now refute barbarism. Islam , , , seem(s) to want to return humanity to the dark age. That is a huge irreconcilable difference"--- what on earth was the relevance of these repeated references to the rejected negatives of the Old Testament?

BbyG; yes, I will try to stop carrying water for "those who most militantly seek to impose that darkness here and now". I am still "sympathetic" for lack of a better wordfor "innocent" Muslims, although GM made a point a while ago to which I agreed, that those who are "good" Muslims are awfully quiet, aren't they? Perhaps they needto speak a little louder.

Crafty, as for my point, GM posted a criticism of a U.S. War College faculty member. The author's criticism was based upon many examples of "unlicensed hostile action" demonstrated in the Koran. In fairness, I merely pointed out that in the Old Testament, perhaps an equal number of "unlicensed hostile actions" took place. Both "books" i.e. bothfaiths, Islam and Judaism committed atrocities. BbyG correctly pointed out that Judaism and Christianity have evolved; Islam has not. Rather Islam seems to have regressed.

Recent threats made to Chicago-area synagogues have motivated several Evanston and Northwestern Jewish organizations to increase security measures.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, two synagogues and a Jewish school were vandalized on Jan. 10. The graffiti included hate messages directed at Israel for its invasion of the Gaza Strip.

A week before, bomb threats were made to several Chicago-area Jewish schools. And on Dec. 29, a man threw a Molotov cocktail at the outside wall of Temple Sholom of Chicago, 3480 N. Lake Shore Drive.

The string of events in the area, combined with the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Palestine, sparked conversation over security practices at Jewish centers and synagogues in Evanston. The Fiedler Hillel Center, 629 Foster St., implemented new measures starting this week, said assistant director Cydney Topaz.

Hillel will now use a buzzer system at the front door, requiring any person entering the building to be buzzed in. In addition, any visitors will need to identify themselves while entering the building, Topaz said.

"We definitely wanted to be proactive," she said. "Our main goal is to ensure the safety of the students."

Hillel staff made the decision to up security after conversations with community partners, students and board members, Topaz said. Hillel also worked with University Police to make the changes, which will be permanent.

Student workers at Hillel were trained for the new security measures Sunday, and first implemented the procedure Monday, said Lindsey Traiman, a Hillel student staff member. The buzzer system hasn't bothered students at all, the Weinberg freshman said.

"It's definitely important to do, and in no way a hassle," Traiman said.

Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, director of the Tannenbaum Chabad House, 2014 Orrington Ave., said that in light of the recent attacks in Israel and Gaza, and incidents in Chicago, he is thankful nothing has occurred in the immediate area. NU cultural and religious groups value a "high level of discourse," which has prevented any hostilities from arising on campus, he said.

The Chabad House already had "very good" security measures in place, including a buzzer system, Klein said. Klein is also the senior police chaplain with the Evanston Police Department, and said he has always been aware of necessary security measures year-round.

The only recent change concerning the Chabad House has been a heightened police presence, which has occurred at many Jewish facilities in Evanston, Klein said.

"The vigilance of the Evanston and NU police departments has helped keep security up in this area," he said.

Area synagogues have noticed the increased police presence, too.

The Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, 303 Dodge Ave., has had a buzzer and security camera system in place for years, said Jill Persin, administrative assistant to the clergy. The synagogue is now putting in place additional security at events, she said.

"There's only so much you can do," Persin said. "We're just keeping our eyes certainly wider and we're just fortunate that the Evanston Police Department is in tune with it."

Chabad Lubavitch headquarters threatened with attack by NY based radical Muslim group

January 22, 2009MIM: The Chabad Lubavitch movement posted this information on their website.

Threats Made Against 770

Tuesday, there was a huge police presence following threats that were made against the community on a Muslim blog • This morning, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly made a phone call to Chanina Sperlin from the inauguration ceremony in Washington DC, to discuss threats against 770 • Last week, the Department of Homeland Security sponsored the installation of security systems in and around 770 • Report & Photos

Along with the expected stir Inauguration day caused across the nation on Tuesday morning, Crown Heights residents saw a tremendous visible police presence following threats that were made against the community on a Muslim blog. This morning, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly made a phone call to Chanina Sperlin, vice president of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council from the inauguration ceremony in Washington DC, to discuss threats against 770.

The Commissioner is looking into the situation," said Sperlin, "The Crown Heights community was considered a target in the past, and whether or not this is serious remains to be seen." Sperlin also received phone calls from members of the joint terrorism task force and FBI, who assured him that the community does not have to worry, the FBI and NYPD are working together to ensure a major security presence is located in and around Crown Heights.

The site, www.revolutionmuslim.com which featured the threat is run by Yousef Al-Khattab, a New York City cab driver who operates the extremist Islamic anti-American Web site that features violent images on a daily basis: From the Statue of Liberty, with an ax blade cutting through her side; to a video mocking the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, entitled "Daniel Pearl I am Happy Your Dead "; or the latest speech from Sheikh Abdullah Faisal, an extremist Muslim cleric convicted in the UK and later deported for soliciting the murder of non-Muslims.

The latest - a cartoon-like image depicting 770 Eastern Parkway, Lubavitch World Headquarters, as a target in retaliation for Israel's attacks on Gaza.

Formerly known as Joseph Cohen, al-Khattab is an American-born Jew who converted to Islam after attending an Orthodox Rabbinical school, which he later described as a "racist cult."

The 39-year-old New York taxi driver launched RevolutionMuslim.com with the mission of "preserving Islamic culture," "calling people to the oneness of G-d" and asking them to "support the beloved Sheik Abdullah Faisal, who's preaching the religion of Islam and serving as a spiritual guide."

A mobile command center was be stationed in front of 770, and many more cops are being sent to patrol the neighborhood streets.

Alert blogger notifies authorities

According to the TheCoolJew, a Lubavitcher blogger, he got an e-mail from Devorah who runs the blog ShiratDevorah. "She sent us a link to a post she found about a Muslim who wants to attack 770". The blogger took this very seriously and forwarded the E-mail to the proper authorities.

Security Systems Installed in 770

Unrelated to this specific threat, work to install security systems in and around 770, was commenced last week. The security systems, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security includes many high tech video cameras, and other systems which Chabad.info was told not to publish for obvious reasons.

In the first stage of the new initiative to revamp security at 770, consultants, including representatives of the F.B.I. as well as a group from the Israeli embassy surveyed the perimeter of 770, and produced a proposal for measures to be taken to further secure the building.

Four cameras have already been installed in different spots around the building.

MIM: The mission statement of Revolution Muslim.Allah says in the Quran:

"Let there rise from amongst you group(s) who invite others to the khair(Islam), command the good, and forbid the evil, and they are the ones who are successful." [3:104]

Revolution Muslim is a message and movement grounded in the sayings, deeds, actions and understanding of Ahlus Sunnah wal jama'ah (The collective body of those Muslims that adhere to the ways of the Prophet (SAWS) and the first four generations of Muslims). Revolution Muslim's purpose is to invite people to proper Islam (Aqeedah (creed) + Shariah (path)) and command the good (justice and peace), while forbidding the falsehood (lies and deceptions) of society. Our mission is to one day see the Muslims united under one Khalifah and under the commands of Allah (SWT). We focus on educating Muslims and Non-Muslims alike about the actuality of the religion and thereby work to preserve traditional Islamic values for Muslims across the globe. We pray that we may witness the dismantlement of western, secular dominance across the world as we hold it to be pagan and idolatrous in the majority of its presumptions. We seek a resurrection of the just example set forth by centuries of Islamic rule throughout the ages and we hold it to be self evident for the objective soul and mind that Allah is One and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is His Prophet and that the religion offers the solution to all of the world's ills and afflictions.

Allah says:

They wish to extinguish the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah will not agree except that He will perfect His light, even if the disbelievers hate it. It is He Who has sent His Noble Messenger with guidance and the true deen (way of life), in order that it may prevail over all other ways of life - even though the polytheists hate it. [9:32-33]

Our mission is to preserve actual Islamic culture by presenting it to the society and entering it into the hearts and minds of the people. Islam is a great religion of monotheism founded on the principles of increased knowledge, justice, charity and public service. Unfortunately, much of the rich history of the religion has been obscured. We hypothesize that the aforementioned reality is largely the result of changing cultural states, and a weakness never before witnessed in the ummah. Our activities include but are not limited to:

1) To call people to the Oneness of Allah (God), the Creator and the religion of Islam.

2) To support the dawa of our beloved Sheikh Abdullah Al-Faisal, recently released from prison and secure in Jamaica preaching the religion and serving as our spiritual guide

3) To educate Muslims and Non-Muslims alike about Islamic religious, social, political, economic, and cultural history and traditions in an effort to preserve cultural identity, religious affiliation, and neighborhood understanding.

4) To distribute physical, mental and spiritual charity to the poor and underprivileged people of New York City but especially to the immigrant Muslim population who may be largely unaware of the social service system of the city.

5) To produce a literary journal and other bodies of literature that explore and examine present Islamic issues.

6) To establish a community center where the aforementioned purposes may be better realized and lectures, conferences, presentations and other educational and religious gatherings may occur. http://www.revolutionmuslim.com/mission

Video footage posted on a website shows police officers running way from chanting demonstrators who took part in a violent protest in London against Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip.The ten-minute amateur film shows 30 officers being chased by a crowd of up to 3,000 people who broke away from an official protest march last month.The video, posted on YouTube, shows protesters chanting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Greatest) and 'Fatwa', a death threat under Islamic law.Watch the protesters chase the police...